Shingles in throat: Symptoms and treatment

In some cases, shingles — or herpes zoster — can affect the throat. It can lead to blisters and pain in the throat that affect daily life.

Shingles can affect various systems in the body, including the brain and spinal cord, as well as the organs, skin, and bones. The cause of the condition is usually the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 in 3 people will develop shingles. However, very few cases of shingles in the throat are reported in the medical literature.

Keep reading to learn more about shingles in the throat, including symptoms, causes, treatment, and some answers to frequently asked questions on the topic.

Cases of shingles in the head and neck can result in a range of signs and symptoms, possibly due to the potential for damage in various nerves or a combination of nerves.

For example, one case report of an 80-year-old male with shingles of the larynx notes that he had experienced the following symptoms:

• a sore throat
• difficulty swallowing
• hoarseness

In another case report, this time including a 67-year-old female, the authors note the following symptoms:

• severe sore throat
• pain on swallowing
• redness of the throat
• pain extending to the left jaw and ear
• blisters spreading from the soft palate to the tonsils and down the throat
• tenderness on physical examination
• sensitivity to cold water
• altered sense of taste
• enlarged lymph nodes in the neck

Shingles in the throat can happen when the dormant varicella-zoster virus reactivates in the body. People of advanced age and those with weakened immune function are at increased risk of having the virus become active again.

Research from 2020 proposes that UV radiation from sunlight exposure could increase a person’s risk of developing shingles.

However, the findings indicate an association between typical sun exposure and shingles in males but not females. There was also a slight increase in the risk of shingles in both males and females with a history of severe sunburn.

Other potential risk factors for shingles include having the following:

• a family history of shingles
• autoimmune diseases
• depression
• asthma
• diabetes
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Additionally, a 2021 study using data from the Korean National Sample cohort found people with herpes zoster infection are more likely to have laryngitis than those without herpes zoster infection. Laryngitis refers to inflammation of the larynx (voice box).

Learn more about the cause of shingles.

Treatment of shingles in the throat is similar to treating shingles anywhere in the body and largely involves antiviral medication. These can help shorten the duration of symptoms and decrease their severity.

Antiviral medications can also help with:

• treating the lesion in the throat
• pain management
• prevent postherpetic neuralgia, a type of complication

Typically, doctors may prescribe the following medications at specific doses:

Other medications along with the antiviral can help with symptom management, including:

• analgesics, such as ibuprofen (Advil)
• opioid medications for more severe cases
• anti-inflammatory drugs, such as corticosteroids
• gabapentin for nerve-related pain

Researchers of the previously mentioned case report note that treatment approaches should be individualized, especially with pain management. This is likely due to how differently the condition appears in people. For example, they prescribed pregabalin (Lyrica) in this case, which helps with nerve pain.

The CDC estimates that 10-18% of people who get shingles are left with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN). This condition causes pain in the area where the lesion was. The pain can last months or years and may be debilitating.

Additionally, some people can develop eye problems, which may lead to blindness. Other possible but very rare complications of shingles include:

• pneumonia
• trouble hearing
• encephalitis (brain inflammation)

PHN can sometimes be fatal.

Learn more about PHN.

Doctors may diagnose shingles in the throat by taking a medical history and performing a physical examination. An endoscopy, where the doctor inserts a thin tube with a camera on it, may help them assess the throat in more detail.

The lesion may be distinctive enough but if someone has an atypical presentation — such is the case with shingles in the throat — diagnosis may be challenging.

Laboratory tests may be beneficial. One effective choice is using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which detects the virus from samples taken from the lesion. PCR tests provide rapid and accurate results. Also, they are particularly helpful in diagnosing atypical cases.

Doctors can often misdiagnose shingles in the throat as a rash if blisters are not necessarily visible.

Therefore, it is important to see a doctor if people have throat pain. Sometimes, the blisters may be visible at the top of the throat.

Early diagnosis and treatment with antiviral medications help to clear up the blisters quickly and can help prevent long-term or severe pain.

Below are some commonly asked questions and their answers about shingles in the throat:

How serious is shingles in the throat?

Children and young people usually get milder symptoms, and most adults only get shingles once.

The course of the disease can be serious for those with advanced age or weakened immunity. While there is no cure, vaccination can prevent shingles in both groups.

Very rarely, the blisters can spread to nearby areas and sometimes affect the whole body. For example, when shingles affect the facial nerve, the condition is called Ramsey Hunt syndrome.

How long does recovery take?

Most cases of shingles in adults without complications go away after 2 to 4 weeks. However, some people experience PHN that can last months or even years after the initial infection.

Is it contagious?

The blisters that develop when a person has shingles contain the live virus. If a person has never had chickenpox or shingles and comes into contact with blister fluid, they can contract the virus and develop chickenpox.

Shingles is a common viral infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus. However, shingles in the throat is an atypical presentation.

Shingles in the throat mostly affect older people and those with reduced immune function. Shingles in the throat can cause similar symptoms as a typical case of shingles, such as blisters and pain.

Complications include postherpetic pain lasting months or years. In very rare cases, this can be fatal. Getting antiviral and pain management treatment as soon as possible can help limit the symptoms.

Shingles in throat: Symptoms and treatment

In some cases, shingles — or herpes zoster — can affect the throat. It can lead to blisters and pain in the throat that affect daily life.

Shingles can affect various systems in the body, including the brain and spinal cord, as well as the organs, skin, and bones. The cause of the condition is usually the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 in 3 people will develop shingles. However, very few cases of shingles in the throat are reported in the medical literature.

Keep reading to learn more about shingles in the throat, including symptoms, causes, treatment, and some answers to frequently asked questions on the topic.

Cases of shingles in the head and neck can result in a range of signs and symptoms, possibly due to the potential for damage in various nerves or a combination of nerves.

For example, one case report of an 80-year-old male with shingles of the larynx notes that he had experienced the following symptoms:

• a sore throat
• difficulty swallowing
• hoarseness

In another case report, this time including a 67-year-old female, the authors note the following symptoms:

• severe sore throat
• pain on swallowing
• redness of the throat
• pain extending to the left jaw and ear
• blisters spreading from the soft palate to the tonsils and down the throat
• tenderness on physical examination
• sensitivity to cold water
• altered sense of taste
• enlarged lymph nodes in the neck

Shingles in the throat can happen when the dormant varicella-zoster virus reactivates in the body. People of advanced age and those with weakened immune function are at increased risk of having the virus become active again.

Research from 2020 proposes that UV radiation from sunlight exposure could increase a person’s risk of developing shingles.

However, the findings indicate an association between typical sun exposure and shingles in males but not females. There was also a slight increase in the risk of shingles in both males and females with a history of severe sunburn.

Other potential risk factors for shingles include having the following:

• a family history of shingles
• autoimmune diseases
• depression
• asthma
• diabetes
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Additionally, a 2021 study using data from the Korean National Sample cohort found people with herpes zoster infection are more likely to have laryngitis than those without herpes zoster infection. Laryngitis refers to inflammation of the larynx (voice box).

Learn more about the cause of shingles.

Treatment of shingles in the throat is similar to treating shingles anywhere in the body and largely involves antiviral medication. These can help shorten the duration of symptoms and decrease their severity.

Antiviral medications can also help with:

• treating the lesion in the throat
• pain management
• prevent postherpetic neuralgia, a type of complication

Typically, doctors may prescribe the following medications at specific doses:

Other medications along with the antiviral can help with symptom management, including:

• analgesics, such as ibuprofen (Advil)
• opioid medications for more severe cases
• anti-inflammatory drugs, such as corticosteroids
• gabapentin for nerve-related pain

Researchers of the previously mentioned case report note that treatment approaches should be individualized, especially with pain management. This is likely due to how differently the condition appears in people. For example, they prescribed pregabalin (Lyrica) in this case, which helps with nerve pain.

The CDC estimates that 10-18% of people who get shingles are left with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN). This condition causes pain in the area where the lesion was. The pain can last months or years and may be debilitating.

Additionally, some people can develop eye problems, which may lead to blindness. Other possible but very rare complications of shingles include:

• pneumonia
• trouble hearing
• encephalitis (brain inflammation)

PHN can sometimes be fatal.

Learn more about PHN.

Doctors may diagnose shingles in the throat by taking a medical history and performing a physical examination. An endoscopy, where the doctor inserts a thin tube with a camera on it, may help them assess the throat in more detail.

The lesion may be distinctive enough but if someone has an atypical presentation — such is the case with shingles in the throat — diagnosis may be challenging.

Laboratory tests may be beneficial. One effective choice is using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which detects the virus from samples taken from the lesion. PCR tests provide rapid and accurate results. Also, they are particularly helpful in diagnosing atypical cases.

Doctors can often misdiagnose shingles in the throat as a rash if blisters are not necessarily visible.

Therefore, it is important to see a doctor if people have throat pain. Sometimes, the blisters may be visible at the top of the throat.

Early diagnosis and treatment with antiviral medications help to clear up the blisters quickly and can help prevent long-term or severe pain.

Below are some commonly asked questions and their answers about shingles in the throat:

How serious is shingles in the throat?

Children and young people usually get milder symptoms, and most adults only get shingles once.

The course of the disease can be serious for those with advanced age or weakened immunity. While there is no cure, vaccination can prevent shingles in both groups.

Very rarely, the blisters can spread to nearby areas and sometimes affect the whole body. For example, when shingles affect the facial nerve, the condition is called Ramsey Hunt syndrome.

How long does recovery take?

Most cases of shingles in adults without complications go away after 2 to 4 weeks. However, some people experience PHN that can last months or even years after the initial infection.

Is it contagious?

The blisters that develop when a person has shingles contain the live virus. If a person has never had chickenpox or shingles and comes into contact with blister fluid, they can contract the virus and develop chickenpox.

Shingles is a common viral infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus. However, shingles in the throat is an atypical presentation.

Shingles in the throat mostly affect older people and those with reduced immune function. Shingles in the throat can cause similar symptoms as a typical case of shingles, such as blisters and pain.

Complications include postherpetic pain lasting months or years. In very rare cases, this can be fatal. Getting antiviral and pain management treatment as soon as possible can help limit the symptoms.

Sore throat. Causes of sore throat.

Causes of a sore throat

There is not a single person who does not experience a sore throat. In most cases, sore throat is associated with colds of the upper respiratory tract and is usually well treated with folk remedies at home.

Despite the prevalence of sore throat symptoms and the amount of material in the media about how to get rid of it with various pharmaceutical products, in some cases severe pain can be a serious problem, making it impossible to eat and sometimes even drink water becomes very difficult, as for example with paratonsillar abscess. In most cases, sore throat is the result of inflammation of the oropharyngeal mucosa in diseases such as tonsillitis, pharyngitis, epiglotitis (inflammation of the epiglottis). Sore throat can also be a manifestation of the pathology of the thyroid gland, osteochondrosis of the cervical spine. After examining the ENT organs, a qualified specialist always identifies the cause of the sore throat, and if it is not associated with ENT pathology, then he recommends consultations with other specialists and prescribes the studies necessary to clarify the diagnosis. Increasing sore throat when swallowing, sore throat on the one hand almost always indicate that the cause is associated with an inflammatory process in the pharynx.

Correct and timely treatment of acute inflammatory diseases of the upper respiratory tract is very important. In the case of incorrect treatment tactics, acute diseases turn into chronic diseases of the pharynx, such as chronic tonsillitis, chronic pharyngitis, in which the patient is already getting used to constant pain in the throat, which is fundamentally wrong. Sooner or later, with concomitant adverse factors such as hypothermia, stress, seemingly harmless diseases can decompensate and cause a number of formidable complications.

If you often encounter such a symptom as a sore throat in your life, it is better not to postpone everything, but to start by visiting an ENT doctor to identify the cause of the sore throat, and if it is associated with ENT pathology, proceed to the correct treatment , which will help to avoid a number of problems in the future.

Sore throat treatment

The first step in treating a sore throat is to find out its cause. The only correct way is to visit a qualified ENT doctor, this will save time and money spent on unnecessary medicines. Of course, it should be recognized that it is impossible to expect from all people who experience a sore throat an immediate visit to an ENT doctor, most begin self-treatment, which usually involves the use of widely advertised remedies, gargling. We must agree that in most cases this turns out to be an effective way, since sore throat is most often caused by inflammation of the pharynx, which is a complication of SARS.

It is very important to consult an ENT doctor in cases where, despite one or two days of self-treatment, the sore throat does not subside, this indicates that the treatment is incorrect and it is imperative to find out the cause of the pain, establish a diagnosis, which always helps to avoid a number of problems with ENT organs and the body as a whole. For all its apparent simplicity, sore throat is based on a rather complex pathogenetic platform based on the complex morphology and physiology of the mucosa of the upper respiratory tract. Proper treatment of sore throat should be based on an understanding of all these features and consist in influencing all the important links in the pathogenesis of sore throat. With home self-treatment, especially with weakened immunity, which usually always takes place in a large metropolis, such as Moscow, it does not achieve an impact on all factors of the disease, which leads to chronic inflammation and the occurrence of chronic tonsillitis, chronic pharyngitis, chronic laryngitis. The treatment of chronic diseases of the pharynx requires much more time and effort, therefore it is more correct to start the correct treatment at the stage of an acute process.

The effectiveness of my method of treatment is due to the simultaneous powerful effect on the entire area of ​​the mucous membrane lining the respiratory tract by inhalation therapy. The versatility and originality of my method makes it possible to cure most forms of both acute and chronic diseases of the pharynx, manifested by such an unpleasant symptom as a sore throat. Treatment will help to quickly get rid of sore throat caused by both acute and chronic ENT pathology, and prevent a number of complications. For residents of other regions, remote treatment is possible.

Sore throat when swallowing: treatment, causes, prevention

Most of us are familiar with the common symptom of sore throat when swallowing. Most often, such symptoms accompany us during a cold, but they can also be associated with other diseases. Less commonly, severe sore throat when swallowing can be signs of allergic reactions, thyroid disease, cancer of the larynx, pharynx.

Most often, sore throats are symptoms of a viral, bacterial or fungal infection, causing the following inflammatory diseases of the nasopharynx, larynx:

• pharyngitis;
• laryngitis;
• tonsillitis (or tonsillitis).

It is also worth noting that a sore throat can occur due to other reasons: dry air or prolonged tension of the vocal cords, other reasons that are not pathological and do not imply the development of the disease.

Causes of sore throat

The main causes of sore throat are inflammation and irritation, swelling caused by infectious or non-infectious factors. In addition to pain, other symptoms are possible that help determine the factor that provokes discomfort.

In order to understand the cause of pain, the physician must always take a thorough history of the patient.

Sore throat when swallowing with temperature

Sore throat with fever and general malaise is typical of infectious processes. Aggressive viruses, bacteria or fungal agents damage the mucosa, the immune system immediately reacts, forming a focus of inflammation.

Viral infections commonly cause pharyngitis and laryngitis. With infectious mononucleosis, the sore throat is severe, accompanied by an increase in lymph nodes, high fever, and an increase in tonsils.

With adenovirus, sore throat is accompanied by a runny nose, redness of the eyes and lacrimation, fever, barking cough.

Herpangina is a viral infection in which sore throat with fever is accompanied by the formation of blisters on the walls of the pharynx.

With bacterial lesions, acute tonsillitis (tonsillitis) develops. In addition to sore throat, high fever, intoxication, nausea, enlarged tonsils with purulent deposits or plugs are typical. There may be muscle and joint pain.

Fungal lesions are characterized by sore throat, low temperature, white patches on the tonsils and pharynx. Such infections are typical for individuals with reduced immune defenses.

Sore throat when swallowing on one side

If a sore throat with fever occurs on one side, this is often a sign of a retropharyngeal abscess.

Well-located pain on one side may be the result of foreign objects or food trauma (bones, sharp edges of hard food).

Sometimes persistent pain in one side can be a sign of a tumor process.

It should be noted that when there is a sore throat and there is an increase in body temperature, it is not necessary to self-medicate, it is necessary to consult a doctor, since different causes of pain and temperature have different methods of treatment.

Sore throat when swallowing without fever

Pain without fever is typical of exposure to various external factors, allergens, drugs.

Itching, burning and sore throat is possible with severe dryness, high air temperature, its strong dust or pollution. Also, a sore throat in the morning is possible due to mouth breathing, heavy snoring and drying of the mucous membranes. In such cases, it is necessary to exclude diseases of the ENT organs.

Contact with allergens may cause sore throat due to runny nose, conjunctivitis, skin rash. Usually perspiration and pain are accompanied by a cough. Similar symptoms are also possible after taking allergenic food, some medications.

Periodic reflux of stomach contents into the esophagus and pharynx (reflux) can cause sore throat. It is especially intense in the morning, as reflux is more common at night. Accompanied by heartburn, perspiration, burning sensation in the throat.

A sore throat is possible with a deficiency of certain substances – a lack of vitamin B2 or vitamin B12, a deficiency of ascorbic acid.

Sore throat is possible as one of the manifestations of chronic pathologies – diabetes, liver damage, kidney failure, endocrine diseases.

There are many reasons for a sore throat. With prolonged anxiety, it is better to consult a specialist.

How to treat a sore throat

The approaches to treating sore throat when swallowing, regardless of the disease that caused this symptom, are similar and are aimed at eliminating the infection and relieving symptoms. In case of sore throat when swallowing, it is recommended:

• avoid hot, very cold, spicy food – such food irritates the throat;
• stop smoking;
• , if possible, be silent, in order not to strain the vocal cords;
• well ventilate and humidify the air in the room where the patient is located;
• drink more fluids;
• when the temperature rises above 38 ° C, it is recommended to take antipyretic drugs;
• depending on the type of infection that caused the disease, the doctor prescribes antibiotics (penicillins, macrolides or cephalosporins) or antivirals;
• topical therapy is aimed at relieving irritation and swelling of the throat. It is recommended to rinse every 1.5-2 hours, irrigate the throat with special sprays, lozenges – they relieve inflammation and have an analgesic effect.

First of all, of course, during the treatment it is necessary to remove the pain syndrome – for this, symptomatic drugs and protective measures are used, but in order to eliminate the cause of the pain, it is necessary to understand its genesis and already act on it (if it is an infection, then taking antibiotics or antiviral drugs, if these are problems with the gastrointestinal tract – affect the stomach, etc.)

Methods for the prevention of diseases of the throat

Prevention of diseases that can cause sore throat, including when swallowing, includes:

• avoid alcohol and smoking;
• avoidance of hypothermia;
• strengthening of general immunity;
• compliance with the rules of personal and general hygiene;
• treatment of other diseases that can provoke sore throat (sinusitis, caries, otitis media).

With timely treatment and compliance with all doctor’s recommendations, the prognosis of sore throat when swallowing is favorable.

Popular Questions and Answers

We spoke with general practitioner Valeria Trapeznikova about when to see a doctor for a sore throat, what warning signs require an ambulance to be called immediately, and how to quickly get rid of pain.

When should I see a doctor for a sore throat?

The following situations require the usual visit to a doctor:

• when a sharp pain in the throat continues for a sufficiently long time – more than 48 hours without a rise in temperature and other symptoms of SARS;
• if a sore throat is accompanied by a sudden increase in temperature;
• if you have enlarged cervical lymph nodes;
• for hoarseness;
• if there are purulent plugs in the tonsils or back of the throat.

You should also consult a doctor if the pain bothers you for a long time or is accompanied by a change in voice, hoarseness, a feeling of “coma” in the throat.